Winter Riding Blues

I got the winter riding blues.  The weather has turned nasty again, and in Salt Lake City with the lake effect, huge half dollar size snowflakes pelt against your glasses rendering your vision inoperable with an opaque fog.  You lower your glasses so you can see out of a tiny little vent between eyeglasses and helmet visor thus subjecting your eyeballs to a vicious pelting; you pray you can reach the stoplight before your eyeballs go opaque, so you can reach into your pocket for a napkin to clear off your glasses before venturing onward.  Riding down the bench, a feature caused by the Wasatch Fault; a fault that separates the Colorado Plateau from the Great Basin; a precipitous descent that is harrowing on a clear spring day let alone with the greatest snow on earth driving straight into your face horizontally.  If it has snowed all night long, which is of frequent occurrence in the Wasatch, the morning rides become fraught with danger with a heavy covering of slush or worse clear ice on the pavement.  Then you encounter idiots; pedestrians and automobiles entering the roadway in your path completely oblivious of the fact that wet wheels and breaks require a longer stopping distance; or worse: your wheel locks up just a wee bit on the clear ice and bang down you go.  I swear when the weather gets bad the suppressed automobile driver idiot gene expresses itself in spades. It is not enough to be chilled to the bone with frozen fingers and feet, you also must be petrified with fear hoping the nut who is ahead has enough common sense to get out of the way.  Get out of the way!  Vocal demonstrations of despair are common among cyclists when contemplating certain extermination of the self. Maybe they should hospitalize deranged delusional fools who have enough stupidity to try to steer, under the most abysmal road conditions, a two wheel self propelled mountain bike that weighs twenty eight pounds out of the path of a demented person who possesses a fifty intelligent quotient, who is driving a automobile that weighs four thousand pounds and has the energy equivalent of four hundred horses.  Yes, the pavement is a very hard object that has a tendency to road rash the skin and break the bones, you need to develop the skills of a professional tumbler to avoid lethal consequences when encountering a automobile collision. I found out the hard way one fine day when a distracted driver turned left right smack dab into my front wheel and I was propelled like a rocket from my saddle in a parabolic arc straight into the street. Fortunately, a nifty acrobatic roll saved me from any serious injury, while a passing shuttle bus full of horrified passengers looked on.

Riding a bike in winter is hard work, you can wear a neon green, florescent yellow, or retina scorching red skin suit that is supposed to wick away moisture and heat from your body, but they still can't see you.  At night you can have the best headlight and flashing taillight in the world, wear a vest with reflective tape, plaster your pedals and wheels with reflective tape, reflectors, and lights; and still they can't see you.  With too much frequency lately you hear reports on the radio news of another winter bike rider being crushed by some hit and run driver; they murder you and then flee like rats from a aflame sewer.  Two days ago a twenty five year old cyclist, in the prime of life, probably riding his bike to work, was extinguished like a candle by some moron probably texting or yucking on the phone, or who was in a hurry and could not be bothered.  Salt Lake City has a ghost bike, a old cruiser painted white and chained to a power pole, a monument to a young woman who was killed by a hit and run driver who was never tracked down and who did not have enough courage or honesty to come forward and admit their responsibility.

Winter riding trashes all of my components, and I hate the filthy ice and oil spatters that ruin my clothes. Shut up sniveler!  You want to be a couch potato, go buy a car!